Re: Scheduling on the fly?

[Roger M. Burkhart]

> I have a tricky activity library question. I want my observerSwarm to
> manage (almost)-separate runs of a modelSwarm, in which the methods in
> the modelSwarm:
> 
> -buildActions;
> -activateIn: (id) swarmContext;
> 
> are *themselves* scheduled by the schedule of the observerSwarm. In
> other words, is it possible to build a schedule "on the fly" as it
> were. That is, I need to be able to call the buildActions in the
> modelSwarm is called *after* the activateIn ("activation") of the
> top-level "observerSwarm". Failing this, is there another way to do
> what I am trying to do?

There's nothing special about buildActions or activateIn: that should
prevent you from being able to schedule and execute them in actions
like any other messages.  So there doesn't seem to be any reason you
shouldn't be able to do what you're trying to do.

> I think I now know why this doesn't work - because the schedules in
> the modelSwarm are unknown to the observerSwarm when the observerSwarm
> is activated and thus aren't properly merged into the top level
> schedule. How to get around this?

It's perfectly OK for schedules or subswarms to be activated in a swarm
after the swarm has already been activated.  The merging of the newly
activated schedule doesn't start until it's activated; the owner swarm
doesn't know or need to know anything about it until the activation
request.  I didn't see anything obvious in a quick glance at your code,
but it should be possible to do what you're trying to do.  If you find
something not behaving as you think it should, we can always try to create
a self-contained test case.

--Roger




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